An orca whale that carried her dead calf more than two weeks has let go of the body, ending her "tour of grief," researchers said. The female killer whale was first spotted on July 24 pushing the corpse of her offspring that had died 30 minutes after birth, according to the Center for Whale Research in Washington state.

Scientists on Monday unveiled a previously unknown species of giant pterosaur, the first creatures with a backbone to fly under their own power. Neither dino nor bird, pterosaurs -- more commonly known as pterodactyls -- emerged during the late Triassic period more than 200 million years ago and lorded over primeval skies until a massive space rock slammed into Earth, wiping out the dinosaurs and most other forms of life some 65 million years ago. "They are delicately framed animals that are built for flying," said Brooks Britt, a paleontologist at Brigham Young University in Utah and lead author of a study in Nature Ecology & Evolution.

The town of Volcano is swaying, back and forth. “It’s been rocking and rolling,” Bobby Camara, a Volcano resident who spent decades working as a ranger at the nearby Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, said from his Big Island home. Though the tremors are mild, they still cause the lamps in Camara’s house to gently swing. “You feel like you’re drunk or on a boat — the quakes are quite subtle," Camara said. SEE ALSO: The ocean is cooking off the Southern California coast. Here's why. For over three months, the southeastern portion of Hawaii has been quaking and gushing lava, though the vigorously erupting lava recently took a pause. One of the more stark results of this activity — stoked by the movement of hot rock beneath the ground — has been the creation of a volcanic cone, appearing as a sort of blackened, miniature volcano. Fissure 8 spews lava into the air in June.Image: usgsCurrently standing at some 100 feet tall, it grew upwards as lava fountained high into the air, and then fell in heaps back to the ground. Volcano scientists informally call it Fissure 8, and it’s known geologically as a “spatter cone.” But what might this new Hawaiian feature be named? Many local Hawaiians — both native and those that came here from other lands — want to make sure that the cone gets a Hawaiian name. Hawaii County councilwoman Sue Lee Loy has even introduced legislation asking that the state confer with local community members to choose a meaningful name that reflects the history and character of the area where it formed. “We have a name for every wind, current, and ripple of the ocean,” Piilani Kaawaloa, a local Hawaiian community member in the Puna District whose family has lived in the area for generations, said in an interview. Rivers of lava flowing to the coast from Fissure 8.Image: usgs“We have a name for every single cloud,” added Kaawaloa, who also sits on the Hawaiian cultural advisory committee, Aha Moku. “Our kapuna [elders] were very observant.” When a name for the new volcanic cone is eventually chosen, it will likely again come from the kapuna, who understand that this volcanism, while dramatic, is expected volcano behavior here. The Big Island’s young volcano, Kilauea, is growing. The naming The U.S. Geologic Survey (USGS), which has been monitoring and researching Kilauea’s activity for decades, is staying out of the naming process, completely. “It is not the responsibility of the USGS Hawaiian Volcano Observatory (HVO) — or part of our mission — to name geologic/geographic features,” Janet Babb, an HVO geologist, said over email. While that is the case today, the government has run into some problems in the past when naming volcanic features without input from local groups in Hawaii. The salmon-colored areas show lava flows over the Big Island since May 3, 2018.Image: usgsAmid a flurry of volcanic activity in 1983, a new volcanic cone formed, similar to Fissure 8. It fed rivers of lava, and it was given a name some local Hawaiians didn't appreciate: Pu'u O. "I gave it that name," admitted Camara without hesitation. He was a 30-year-old park ranger at the time. The cone had been erupting for a while, so rangers figured they ought to give it a name. Camara settled on "Pu'u O," a somewhat fitting name for a gushing volcanic vent, as "ō" means to "endure" or "continue." The first portion of the name wasn't the problem. "Pu'u," which means hill, bulge, or peak, is often used to describe volcanic cones around the Hawaiian islands. But the designation "ō" didn't sit well with everyone. "They didn’t do due diligence to the community," Kaawaloa said. Puʻu ʻŌʻō" erupting in 1983. The cone would eventually reach 200 feet in height.Elders in the community (including Piilani Kaawaloa's grandmother) soon convened. They decided on another name: "Puʻu ʻŌʻō." "ʻŌʻō," is the digging stick of Pele, the Hawaiian goddess of fire and volcanoes. And with this formidable stick, Pele is said to have dug through the ground, unleashing the fire below. Decades after the naming of Puʻu ʻŌʻō, there is still no official rule or law requiring the government to seek guidance from Hawaiian kapuna before naming a new lava flow or geologic feature. Rather, it's more of a norm, or a show of cultural respect. "If anything, we can say the extent to which people who are well-versed in the places and the stories of the location are much more likely to be at play now than in the past," Samuel Ohu Gon lll, a senior scientist and cultural advisor at the Nature Conservancy of Hawaii, said in an interview. To name or not to name Councilwoman Lee Loy, with recently introduced legislation, is certainly moving the Fissure 8 naming process forward. But the evolving volcanic cone likely won't be named anytime soon. Lava from Fissure 8 meeting the ocean earlier in August.Image: usgsAnd that may be a good thing. Fissure 8 is just a few months old. It hasn't fully evolved, and therefore its character isn't fully understood. "It seems a bit premature to name the Fissure 8 cone, as it's ultimate fate is not known," said Babb, noting that Puʻu ʻŌʻō wasn't officially named for three years until after it formed. Some community members, like Kaawaloa, also believe it's a better idea to wait, and watch. "The local community is not in a hurry to name it," Kaawaloa said. "Because you have got to look at the characteristics of the lava flow, and the changes of the lava flow." Moving too quickly "defeats the purpose of 'pono' — making things right," Kaawaloa said. Although a well-known community member, Kaawaloa doesn't think she necessarily needs to be on the council that ultimately names Fissure 8. "It doesn't have to be me," she said. But if she does contribute, Kaawaloa said it's a serious undertaking. She would be naming a place for perpetuity — or, at least, until it gets smothered in a new lava flow. Fissure 8 feeding a river of lava on June 21."The question is, do I want to be responsible?" she said. It's not easy to choose a name for an evolving place. Volcanic cones can quickly collapse down into the dark, steaming underworlds whence they came. In February 1997, 14 years after it was born, Puʻu ʻŌʻō collapsed. "When the time is right, a name will reveal itself," said Camara, who noted he lives too far from Fissure 8 to be involved in such a hyper-local naming process. Camara just believes it should be a descriptive or poetic name, he said, pausing as another quake rocked his home. Anything can happen with a young volcano, he continued. So it's just best to watch, for now. "For all we know, the Fissure 8 cone is going to fall into a big-ass hole — and then what are you going to do?" WATCH: Ever wonder how the universe might end?

Russia's pursuit of counterspace capabilities was "disturbing", Yleem D.S. Poblete, U.S. Assistant Secretary of State for Arms Control, Verification and Compliance, told the U.N.'s Conference on Disarmament which is discussing a new treaty to prevent an arms race in outer space. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov, at the Geneva forum in February, said a priority was to prevent an arms race in outer space, in line with Russia's joint draft treaty with China presented a decade ago. "To the United States this is yet further proof that the Russian actions do not match their words," she said.

Mexico, Aug. 13 (Notimex).- Students from the National Autonomous University of Mexico (UNAM, for its acronym in Spanish), campus Morelos, developed a process to detect contaminants, such as lead, mercury, cadmium and barium, in the water, in the place where they arise and in real time. According to a statement, the process was generated from the combination of two processes already known: one optical and one acoustic. In this regard, Víctor Ulises Lev Contreras Loera, a researcher at the Institute of Physical Sciences (ICF, for its acronym in Spanish) campus Cuernavaca, demonstrated in an experiment that the use of acoustic waves serves to levitate water droplets in the air and improve the detection of the contaminants they contain. From these samples, he applies laser-induced rupture spectroscopy (LIBS), an optical technique capable of simultaneously recording several elements of the periodic table, since they all emit light. "The novel thing is to have, on the one hand, the LIBS technique and, on the other, the levitation technique, which has been known for a long time. We put the two together to analyze the water," said Contreras. His procedure, published last May in the journal Optics Letters, could help develop instruments that monitor contaminants on the site, in a simpler way than with the current tests, which require taking samples for further analysis in the laboratory. "It could be used by the agricultural, pharmaceutical and water purification industries to monitor the liquid for contaminants. The ideal would be to apply it in Mexico in light of the serious pollution problems we have," he said. The LIBS technique focuses on a pulsed high energy laser emission in a sample (in this case a contaminated water drop), which vaporizes the material and generates a plasma. The light emitted by the plasma contains data on the atomic composition of matter, because all the elements of the periodic table emanate light when they are excited. This way the chemical components of the sample can be identified by analyzing the light. The main interest of the project is to monitor pollutants in wastewater and for agriculture. Currently, Contreras has started the patent process and after the international publication, there is a Spanish company interested in technology transfer. NTX/NSG/PSG/JCG